Seeds of Earth: Humanity's Fire, Book 1

First contact: the dream that became a nightmare when the first alien life encountered swarmed locust-like through the solar system. Merciless. Relentless. Unstoppable. With little hope of halting the invading forces, Earth's last, desperate roll of the die was to send out three colony ships - seeds of Earth - to different parts of the galaxy

Columbus Day: Expeditionary Force, Book 1

The Ruhar hit us on Columbus Day. There we were, innocently drifting along the cosmos on our little blue marble, like the Native Americans in 1492. Over the horizon came ships of a technologically advanced, aggressive culture, and BAM! There went the good old days, when humans got killed only by each other. So, Columbus Day. It fits. When the morning sky twinkled again, this time with Kristang starships jumping in to hammer the Ruhar, we thought we were saved.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.

Consider Phlebas

The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it....

The Reality Dysfunction

The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton is the first in Night's Dawn, a sweeping galactic trilogy from the master of space opera. In AD 2600 the human race is finally realizing its full potential. Hundreds of colonized planets across the galaxy host a multitude of wildly diverse cultures. Genetic engineering has pushed evolution far beyond nature's boundaries, defeating disease and producing extraordinary space-born creatures.

Warship: Black Fleet Trilogy, Book 1

In the 25th century, humans have conquered space. The advent of faster-than-light travel has opened up hundreds of habitable planets for colonization, and humans have exploited the virtually limitless space and resources for hundreds of years with impunity. So complacent have they become with the overabundance that armed conflict is a thing of the past, and their machines of war are obsolete and decrepit. What would happen if they were suddenly threatened by a terrifying new enemy?

Terms of Enlistment: Frontlines, Book 1

The year is 2108, and the North American Commonwealth is bursting at the seams. For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements, where you’re restricted to 2,000 calories of badly flavored soy every day. You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world, or you can join the service. With the colony lottery a pipe dream, Andrew chooses to enlist in the armed forces for a shot at real food, a retirement bonus, and maybe a ticket off Earth.

Fear the Sky: The Fear Saga, Book 1

From the Audie-nominated narrator of The Martian. In eleven years' time, a million members of an alien race will arrive at Earth. Years before they enter orbit, their approach will be announced by the flare of a thousand flames in the sky, their ships' huge engines burning hard to slow them from the vast speeds needed to cross interstellar space. These foreboding lights will shine in our night sky like new stars, getting ever brighter until they outshine even the sun, casting ominous shadows and banishing the night until they suddenly blink out.

Fluency

NASA discovered the alien ship lurking in the asteroid belt in the 1960's. They kept the Target under intense surveillance for decades, letting the public believe they were exploring the solar system, while they worked feverishly to refine the technology needed to reach it. Dr. Jane Holloway is content documenting nearly-extinct languages and had never contemplated becoming an astronaut. But when NASA recruits her to join a team of military scientists for an expedition to the Target, it's an adventure she can't refuse.

The Ember War: Publisher's Pack, Books 1-2

The Ember War, book 1: The Earth is doomed. Humanity has a chance. In the near future, an alien probe arrives on Earth with a pivotal mission: to determine if humanity has what it takes to survive the impending invasion by a merciless armada. The probe discovers Marc Ibarra, a young inventor who holds the key to a daring gambit that could save a fraction of Earth's population. Humanity's only chance lies with Ibarra's ability to keep a terrible secret and engineer the planet down the narrow path to survival.

Old Man's War

John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First, he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce - and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So, we fight, to defend Earth and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding.

Hyperion

On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all.

Publisher's Summary

Darien is no longer a lost outpost of humanity, but the prize in an intergalactic power struggle. Hegemony forces have a stranglehold over the planet and crack troops patrol its hotspots while Earth watches, passive, rendered impotent by galactic politics. But its Darien ambassador will soon become a player in a greater conflict. There is more at stake than a turf war on a newly discovered world. An ancient Uvovo temple hide’s access to a hyperspace prison, housing the greatest threat sentient life has ever known. Millennia ago, malignant intelligences were caged there following an apocalyptic war. And their servants work on their release.

However, Darien's guardians have not been idle, gathering resistance on the planet's forest moon. Knowledge has been lost since great races battled in eons past, and now time is short. The galaxy will depend on the Uvovo reclaiming their past - and humanity must look to its future. For a new war is coming.

The first book was written for a 14 to 16 year old. The second book seems to be written for a 6 to 8 year old. Characters magically are saved from death or annihilation. And then there is the excessive rehash of the first book storyline. Pure filler. The story is interesting enough to review book 3 and I hope it is better.

The performance of this book is very good. There are several characters and the story continuously jumps between them. The reader's voices make it easy to follow each scene change. The book itself is mediocre story telling and the kind of science fiction which is very easy to digest because it doesn't go well beyond current capability. The author appears to have read (from the terminology borrowed), very good Sci Fi writers such as Dan Simmons. If you are into deep sci-fi, I would skip it, but if you are up for something at the quality level of a good TV miniseries, this can be an enjoyable listen.

The author introduces too many characters that actually "Speak" throughout the story, and some of these characters are not at all human. So the plot is a little hard to follow even though the underlying plot is relatively simple. It's like if all of the aliens presented in the original movie Star Wars had lines. Also, with so many different characters, it's hard to care about any of them. It's likely why one of the most cogent characacters is the evil cyborg, who is more often presented alone. At one point the author even seemed to introduce God as a character, but thankfully didn't give God any lines.
I didn't hear the 1st in the series and I likely won't. But, The story did build to a climax that may deserve a final book.

Once again Excellent...loved every minute of it. The characters are well defined and bought to life, the twists and turns of the plot is like a 3D maze and the narration is excellent. I can barely wait for the next instalment!

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Anonymous

2/19/12

Overall

"Brilliantly read 2nd part of excellent trilogy"

I picked this having read the first part (Seeds of Earth) following a recommendation by Audible (in fact for the 3rd book of this trilogy - The Ascendent Stars). I have to say that David Thorpe is an even better narrator than Michael Page who so excellently read Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora and Red Seas Under Red Skies.

This book really builds on the first part and the multi-layered Politics / participants lead to an increasingly complex but still coherent and understandable story. I've been racking my brains to try to come up with an equivalent - if you like the recent Battlestar Galactica TV series then this is like that, but more so. Also Iain M Banks fans will surely love this too.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

M

Wakefield, United Kingdom

10/27/12

Overall

"And a bit more ..."

Another enjoyable 18 hours spent with the wonderful David Thorpe narrating; his voice work is a pure joy. The story continues along in this second installment and gets progressively darker, and although it was slightly plodding in places, there were enough twists and turns to keep me going. As with the first book in the series the writing feels a bit dated but it's still worth the effort - I reckon - as this is one big old multilayered universe Michael Cobley's crafted and there are creatures and ideas worth exploring. Onto the third book now ...

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Paul Robinson

7/26/12

Overall

"Excellent space opera"

A complex and long story, involving many characters of different races. Each chapter advances one of the main characters' stories a little further, interweaving the different factions and alliances, building to a grand crescendo.

The author's style is very descriptive, and the story is big - with many characters, locations and points of view. It requires concentration, and if your mind wanders you will find yourself hitting the rewind button! Some reviews have used these points in a negative way - it is a question of personal taste and I enjoyed the detailed narrative style, and the complexity and length of the audiobooks.

The narration is amongst the very best I've heard - David Thorpe has a remarkable variety of different 'special effects' and accents and does a great job of applying them consistently to the characters.

The only negative I have is that the editing could be better - I didn't count but I would guess I heard a retake of a line or paragraph at least half a dozen times across the three books. I'm not deducting any stars though, hearing a few words twice is hardly an issue.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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